1st Saturday Open House | Artist Demo with C.S. Talley in Sharp's Montana exhibition
J. H. Sharp, one of the founders of the Taos Society of Artists, also painted extensively in Montana, living there during fall and wintertime between 1903 and 1910. This season’s Sharp focus for the Couse-Sharp Historic Site is on the work of those years.
On August 3, the exhibition Joseph Henry Sharp's Montana will be open from 3 to 5 pm and feature a painting demonstration by Taos artist C. S. Talley, who will paint at Sharp’s easel while impersonating the historic artist. Also on the tour will be Little Egypt, a gem of an adobe outhouse remodeled after Sharp’s visit to the country in 1915. Still on view is the exhibition Taos Pueblo Portraiture: The Photographic Studies of E. I. Couse in the site’s 1830s Luna Chapel.
A permanent rotating exhibition of artwork, ephemera and collections chronicling the life and work of J. H. Sharp is continually on display in the Taos studio he used for almost 40 years, now fully restored.
Open house guests will also tour the entire historic site and the temporary exhibitions. Docents in every room provide in-depth information on the E. I. Couse home and studio, Virginia Couse Heritage Garden, Kibbey Couse lab and machine shop, and the 1915 Sharp Studio.
“The artworks and objects in the Sharp exhibition are on loan from private collectors and museums,” said Davison Packard Koenig, executive director and curator. “Some are being publicly exhibited for the first time, others for the first time in many years.” Besides finished paintings, the exhibition includes studies, sketches, photos taken by Sharp, Native beadwork, letters, his folding painting stool and other items